But one night, fueled by a sudden, aching hollow in his chest, he typed four words into a search bar: buy world globe online.
The box arrived on a Tuesday, smelling of damp cardboard and distance.
The globe was a physical manifestation of his longing. It was a tether to a reality he had tried to curate out of existence. One evening, his finger landed on a tiny speck of jasper in the middle of the Atlantic: the Azores. He looked at the rough texture of the stone under his nail and realized he could almost feel the salt spray.